Tag Archives: Policy

GCCC is thrilled to host Tim Dixon as an Honorary Senior Research Fellow this year. When making the appointment BEG’s Director Scott Tinker recognized Tim’s “experience developing and managing CCS R&D technology transfer projects through IEAGHG workshops, status in the international CCS community, and ongoing support and collaboration with the Gulf Coast Carbon Center.”

Tim is the Manager of the Technical Programme of the IEA Greenhouse Gas R&D Programme (IEAGHG). Part of his role is providing technical support for regulatory and policy developments for CCS. He oversees the Research Networks on Risk Assessment, Monitoring, Environmental Impacts and Social Science and related technical studies, the IEAGHG International Summer School, and provides technical input to the UNFCCC, ISO, and the London Convention.

During his tenure at IEAGHG and aided by his efforts, CCS was adopted as a climate change mitigation technology under the UNFCCC’s Clean Development Mechanism in 2011. Tim and GCCC’s Susan Hovorka serve together on the Technical Program Committee for the Conference on Greenhouse Gas Control Technologies (GHGT), the long-running and prestigious international conference on greenhouse gas mitigation technology.

One of the significant outcomes of Tim’s Fellowship at BEG will be a workshop focusing on identifying technical barriers and R&D opportunities for offshore, geologic storage of carbon dioxide. The workshop has now been scheduled for April 19-21 at the Gulf Coast Carbon Center, in partnership with the South African National Energy Development Institute and the IEAGHG and with support from the Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum in Austin, Texas.

Katherine Romanak is working closely with Tim to develop the workshop. She said, “We are lucky to have Tim at GCCC. He is an internationally-recognized facilitator in the area of CCS, catalyzing technical collaboration and informing policy at high levels.”

Tim attended the university-wide CCS sponsors conference held last week in Austin. He recorded his impressions in this blog published by the IEAGHG.

Katherine Romanak talks about carbon storage with delegates from around the world at COP21

Katherine Romanak and Hilary Olson are attending the historic UNFCCC COP21 meeting as representatives of both GCCC and UT Austin and are leading outreach efforts on carbon sequestration by hosting several events.

Katherine spoke at a Side Event at the COP on Dec. 1 with co-organizers CO2GeoNet, International Energy Agency Greenhouse Gas Research and Development Programme, and Carbon Capture and Storage Association. The event drew a very large and enthusiastic crowd.

On behalf of GCCC and UT Austin, both Hilary and Katherine will co-host an Exhibit Booth inside the COP for the entire two-week duration of the meeting. The co-organizers are CO2GeoNet, International Energy Agency Greenhouse Gas Research and Development Programme, and Carbon Capture and Storage Association.

UT Austin is also participating in a public outreach booth at the Climate Generations Areas, which is open to the public for the two-week duration of COP. Co-hosts of this booth are CO2GeoNet, Global CCS Institute, International Energy Agency Greenhouse Gas Research and Development Programme, and French Club CO2.

Event organizers have already posted a recap from the Side Event
and you can check the Twitter feed #UTatCOP where Hilary will be posting up-to-the-minute news.

In Lima, Peru at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of the Parties (UNFCCC COP) 20 last week, GCCC’s Vanessa Nunez-Lopez and Katherine Romanak built on CCS momentum by hosting an information booth and an official side event with IEAGHG titled “New large-scale carbon capture and storage projects operating in the Americas.”

The event showed the viability of CCS as a mitigation tool. Projects in various modes of deployment were highlighted including a summary of USA projects (emphasizing the role of the GCCC), the start of the Boundary Dam project in Saskatchewan, Canada, and Petrobras’ strategies for using CCS to manage the CO2 co-produced with Pre-salt hydrocarbons.

GCCC also presented information about an initiative for a global collaboration on an offshore demonstration project spearheaded by both the GCCC and the U.S. Department of Energy through the Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum. IEAGHG summarized the significance of these projects in light of the anticipated climate agreement to be negotiated in Paris in 2015.

The GCCC/IEAGHG-hosted event was well-attended and well received. One Washington DC-based attendee summarized the impact of the discussions, “I didn’t believe CCS could work but now I see that it can, because you are actually doing it.”

GCCC’s first technical input to the UNFCCC was in 2011 when we presented research on groundwater protection and monitoring at both a UNFCCC workshop held in Abu Dhabi, UAE and at a side event at COP 17 in Durban, South Africa. Both events were designed to inform policy-makers about the latest CCS research relevant to negotiations on whether CCS should be included in the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) for developing countries. GCCC technical input contributed to inclusion of CCS in the CDM which has set the stage for CCS to be recognized in other UNFCCC mechanisms including the finance mechanism of the Green Climate Fund, which recently reached a total of $10 billion in pledges.